"Rex."
"Don't." His face presses harder into my stomach. "Don't tell me I'm not. Don't give me the speech. I know what I am. I know what Ilooklike?—"
"You look like an alpha who just killed his way through an opera house with a bullet in his spine to find me."
He goes quiet.
"You look like the guy who shielded me from a pyrotechnic explosion with his own body. Who gave me his room because I was scared. Who sat at a dinner table and ate with his pack for the first time because it would make me happy."
My voice cracks.
Shit.
"You look like my mate. You absolute fuckingidiot."
The chains clink softly as his shoulders shake. At first, I think it’s a laugh, but then I realize it’s something deeper and more raw that he'd kill me for witnessing if he had any fight left.
"And honestly?" I add, sniffing hard because I am not going to cry in this cage, I amnot. "I've always been kind of a monsterfucker."
Dead silence.
"Those are my favorite books. Ask Phoenix. He knows."
Rex's face lifts from my stomach by half an inch.
"You're fucking insane," he mutters.
"Obviously. I'm in a birdcage with a scarred man in chains. This is literally the plot of three of my favorite books. If it weren't for the blood loss and the stalker situation, I'd bethriving."
Something happens against my thigh. A twitch. The ghost of something his ruined mouth can't fully form but his body tries for anyway.
"Are you incapable of being serious?" he growls.
"Yes. You know this. We've been over this."
He blows a puff of air through his nose.
It's so close to a laugh, the tears start sliding down my cheeks. I screw my eyes shut, physically willing myself to not cry, and lean down to press my lips to the corner of his mouth.
The good side.
He turns his head slightly toward me.
He barely kisses me back. More of a press. His cracked lips against mine, tentative and shaking, tasting like blood. His nose brushes my cheek. His lashes—the ones he still has on his left side—flutter against my skin.
I shift.
My mouth drifts.
Not on purpose. Just following the line of his jaw, the warmth of his skin, and my lips brush the edge of the scar tissue. The place where the smooth skin of his undamaged side gives way to the ridged, melted terrain of the right.
Rex wrenches his face away.
Into my chest this time. The chains rattle as his whole body curls inward, his forehead grinding against my sternum through my shirt.
"I can't," he growls. The words vibrate through my body. "I can't..."
I don't push.